A. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the field of lead-acid battery life extension. The invention addresses the problem of reduced lifetime of secondary lead-acid batteries that are used intermittently. The invention has widespread military and non-military applications.
B. Description of the Prior Art
Present lead-acid battery life extension systems such as U.S. Pat. No. 5,677,612 to Campagnuolo, et al., and U.S. Pat. No. 5,063,341 to Gali, employ solar panels, which provide a voltage to a multivibrator (electronic oscillator). The multivibrator in turn provides a small energy pulse to the battery plates so that small amounts of lead sulfate are removed from the plates of the battery and go back into the electrolyte. In doing so doing the battery is rejuvenated or cleansed.
The problem with this technique is that one must use a solar panel which must be placed outside the battery compartment, i.e. on the roof of a vehicle, on the dashboard or in other areas where the sunlight can be collected and transformed into electrical energy to power the multivibrator. Wires must be routed from the solar panel through the vehicle cabin to the battery location. Other vehicles and equipment have two sets of batteries in parallel each set located on either side of the engine compartment. In this case wires to connect the two batteries in parallel must be routed through the engine compartment. In addition, solar panels are expensive and for a system such as a system described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,063,341 can account for more than half of the cost of the pulse system.
It is the purpose of the present invention to bring forth a system, which does not use solar panels to power the multivibrator. This system is not only low cost, but it is free of the problems mentioned above. The system will be placed under the hood of the vehicle adjacent to the battery compartment, or near the batteries when used in mechanized vehicles or power equipment.